Arab Spring

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The Arab Spring
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Understanding the Revolutions of 2011 by Jack O. Goldstone
The Post-Islamist Revolutions by Asef Bayat
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2011 saw dramatic changes in the Arab world. Unprecedented popular
demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya led to the overturning of
autocratic rule in North Africa.
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These protests, demanding greater political freedom, economic
opportunity, and an end to systemic corruption, have resonated deeply
across the region, triggering calls for change throughout the Arab world
(among others in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen), and beyond.
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Arab political language is changing: вЂњThe new slogans are
about equitable distribution of wealth, defeating nepotism
and corruption, freedom of expression and assembly, all of
which are rights meant to restore self-respect and render to
people their due sense of dignity,вЂќ argues Nabil Echchaibi, an
Arab scholar.
At the heart of the Arab revolts: A search for
dignity
A status report on the Arab awakening (As of July 2011)
Source: The Economist вЂ“ 14 July 2011
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One of the remarkable aspects of the prospective
democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle
East is that it has taken so long.
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With the exception of Central Asia, the Arab world is
the last major region to start down the democratic
path.
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Since вЂњthe third waveвЂќ of global democratization
dozens of countries with all kinds of authoritarian
political systems shifted into the democratic camp.
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As most of the world was transformed, however, one
area remained frozen in time: the Arab Middle East.
Intro
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Many of the challenges, frustrations, and unmet aspirations in the
Arab world have existed for years. Why then is there such
agitation for reform now? There is no single answer.
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No one thought Tunisia was on the verge of an eruption; that the
upheaval would spread from Tunisia to Egypt; and that the shocks
would reverberate around the Middle East.
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The old regimes themselves were surprised by the force and speed
of the uprisings.
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Even traditional opposition parties were behind the curve, often
remaining hesitant well after newer popular protest movements
sprang up and seized the moment (with the help of social media
and communications technologies that proved to be a new and
powerful political tool).
Why now?
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The uprising began in December 2010, when a fruit vendor,
set himself on fire in Tunisia to protest his lack of
opportunity and the disrespect of the police.
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The Tunisian revolution was the catalyst that started the
Egyptian revolt and uprisings in other countries.
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The Tunisians were the first to break the barrier of fear,
which had avoided protests before, over worsening
economic, social and political conditions which needed only
a spark to explode forth.
How did it start?
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Rising food prices.
High Unemployment Rate (Especially youth
Unemployment)
Frustration with closed, corrupt, unresponsive
political systems.
Increasing inequality.
Triggers and Drivers
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For a revolution to succeed, a number of factors have to come
together:
1) The government must lose its legitimacy.
2) Elites (especially in the military) must be alienated from the state
and no longer willing to defend it.
3) A broad-based section of the population, spanning ethnic and
religious groups and socioeconomic classes, must mobilize.
4) International powers must either refuse to step in to defend the
government or constrain it from using maximum force to defend
itself.
Necessary Conditions for a Revolution
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Revolutions rarely triumph because these conditions rarely
coincide.
In almost all cases, broad-based popular mobilization is
difficult to achieve because it requires bridging the
different interests of the urban and rural poor, the middle
class, students, professionals, and different ethnic or
religious groups.
In addition, other countries have often intervened to save
embattled rulers in order to stabilize the international system.
(i.e. in support of their opposition to Communists/Iran/
Radical Islamist Groups etc.) -A Recent Example: Bahrain.
Necessary Conditions for a Revolution
How did the sultanistic regimes manage to resist change in the past?
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They preserved some of the formal aspects of democracy- elections,
political parties, a parliament, or a constitution. However, they ruled
above them by installing their supporters in key positions and
sometimes by declaring states of emergency, which they justify by
appealing to fears of external (or internal) enemies.
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Behind the scenes, such dictators generally accumulate great wealth,
which they use to buy the loyalty of supporters and punish
opponents.
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They also seek relationships with foreign countries, promising
stability in exchange for aid and investment.
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The Sultanistic Regimes
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The leaders control their countries' military elites by keeping
them divided.
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To keep the masses depoliticized and unorganized, sultans
control elections and political parties and pay their
populations off with subsidies for key goods, such as
electricity, gasoline, and foodstuffs.
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When combined with surveillance, media control, and
intimidation, these efforts generally ensure that citizens stay
disconnected and passive.
The Sultanistic Regimes
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By following this pattern, politically skillful sultans around the
world (sultanistic dictatorships are not unique to the Arab world:
Mexico, Indonesia and Nicaragua, among others had similar
regimes) have managed to accumulate vast wealth and high
concentrations of power.
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But as the new generation of sultans in the Middle East has
discovered, power that is too concentrated can be difficult to hold
on to.
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The revolutions unfolding across the Middle East represent the
breakdown of increasingly corrupt sultanistic regimes.
The Sultanistic Regimes
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Fast-growing and urbanizing populations in the Middle
East have been hurt by low wages and by food prices that
rose by 32% in the last year alone, according to the UNвЂ™s
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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But it is not simply such rising prices, or a lack of growth,
that fuels revolutions; it is the persistence of widespread
and unrelieved poverty amid increasingly extravagant
wealth (i.e. inequality).
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Although economies across the region have grown in
recent years, the gains have bypassed the majority of the
population, being amassed instead by a wealthy few.
The Collapse of Sultanistic Regimes: The
Arab Spring
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Discontent has also been strengthened by high
unemployment, which has stemmed in part from the
sharp increase in the Arab world's young population.
Not only is the proportion of young people in the
Middle East extraordinarily high, but their numbers
have grown quickly over a short period of time.
Many of these young people have been able to go to
university, especially in recent years.
The Arab Spring
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In both Tunisia and Egypt, the military had seen its
status eclipsed recently.
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In both countries military resentments made the
military less likely to crack down on mass protests;
officers and soldiers would not kill their countrymen
just to keep the Ben Ali and Mubarak families and their
favorites in power.
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A similar defection among factions of the Libyan
military led to Qaddafi's rapid loss of large territories.
The Arab Spring
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Some Western governments, having long supported Ben
Ali and Mubarak as bulwarks against a rising tide of
radical Islam, now fear that Islamist groups are poised to
take over.
Many polls, however, have shown that TurkeyвЂ™s experience
(or the Turkish model: secular, democratic, Westernfriendly) engages the imagination of Arab public opinion
in a way that IranвЂ™s does not.
Arabs tend to see in Turkey not just a vibrant democracy
but a dynamic economy led by IslamвЂ™s equivalent of
Christian Democrats.
After Revolutions
So far, religious rhetoric has been remarkably absent,
even though the participants of the Middle EastвЂ™s many
uprisings remain overwhelmingly people of faith.
пѓ‘ In Tunisia, protestersвЂ™ central objective was to establish a
democratic government.
Similarly, in Egypt the revolution demanded вЂњchange,
freedom, and social justiceвЂќ and was broadly secular.
In fact, the major religious groups did not initially back
the revolution. The Muslim BrotherhoodвЂ™s old guard
joined reluctantly and only after being pushed by the
groupвЂ™s younger members.
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The Post-Islamist Revolutions
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LibyaвЂ™s rebel movement and provisional
government, the National Council, is composed
not of Islamists or al Qaeda members but of a mix
of the secular and faithful, including doctors,
lawyers, teachers, regime defectors, and activists
working
to
end
Muammar
al-GaddafiвЂ™s
oppression.
According to their spokesman, Islamist presence is
minimal, since the countryвЂ™s Islamists were, for the
most part, crushed by Qaddafi long ago.
The Post-Islamist Revolutions
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And in Yemen and Syria, where protesters are also
demanding democracy, there has also been no evidence
of a major Islamist presence.
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TodayвЂ™s overwhelmingly civil and secular revolts
represent a departure from the Arab politics of the mid1980s and 1990s.
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Bolstered by IranвЂ™s 1979 Islamic Revolution, in those
days the political class was consumed by the idea of
establishing an Islamic order, including a religious state
and sharia.
The Post-Islamist Revolutions
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Recently, Islamism began to lose its appeal considerably, and
the Iranian model of revolution lost much of its attractiveness.
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Al QaedaвЂ™s violence, moreover, had caused a backlash against
ordinary Muslims, who found al QaedaвЂ™s practices abhorrent
to the true spirit of Islam.
Post-Islamism emerged as a frame within which religious
politics could become more inclusive.
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Muslims could confidently remain Muslim but also have a
democratic state - as TurkeyвЂ™s example indicated.
The Post-Islamist Revolutions